quote:Question: Do different character classes warrent different stats? For example, a fighter may have stats that deal with the body, but a diplomat wouldn''t find them useful.

Are you trying to decide between having a different set of stats for each class or the same stats, but different *primary* stats? Or were you trying to figure out whether to have different stats that are important to each class?

Wow, that seems a little incoherent. Meh, it''s late.

-kccricket
www.twistedgamer.com

* chirp * chirp *

quote:Original post by kccricket
Are you trying to decide between having a different set of stats for each class or the same stats, but different *primary* stats? Or were you trying to figure out whether to have different stats that are important to each class?

Wow, that seems a little incoherent. Meh, it''s late.

No no, it''s my fault I wasn''t explicit. I was assuming the use of the same stats for each character, tweaked toward their primaries at game start. Then things would as the player chooses. What I was asking though, was _should_ all characters have the same set of stats?

Obviously, this does kinda make sense in terms of the character themself. But it adds a heapload for understandablity... Just a flight of fancy thought.

quote:Original post by Solstice

No no, it''s my fault I wasn''t explicit. I was assuming the use of the same stats for each character, tweaked toward their primaries at game start. Then things would as the player chooses. What I was asking though, was _should_ all characters have the same set of stats?

Obviously, this does kinda make sense in terms of the character themself. But it adds a heapload for understandablity... Just a flight of fancy thought.

Yeah, personally I''d say go ahead and give all the same basic stats with primary tweaking.

But what if you got more complicated? Each stat has a pair of sub-stats that is different for each class? Wait... WOuldn''t the sub-stats be sort of like the skills themselves? Hmm...

-kccricket
www.twistedgamer.com

* chirp * chirp *

This game idea reminds me of Square''s Radical Dreamers, the game that Chrono Cross is based off of. The game was more or less a storybook game, and you had combat, but it was a scripted event type of thing where you pick one of four options, and then half of the battle would follow based on that, and described with great verbousity. I think what you''d have to be careful about when making a game like this is that the players could get bored fast, so you would have to keep them interested through a number of ways, like highly complex animations and a lot of plot branches. Another thing is that a game like this would ride the boarder between low level story and high level story. The distinguishing factor between these two terms is whether or not you have any character development, which is an underly used story factor in the american game industry. If you want to go the high level story path, all of the characters in your game should have personalities of their own, including which ever character you choose to be the main protagonist, and that they''re behavior should be entirely their own, and not totally dependant on which buttons the players press. I''ll throw you an example, any console RPG with a main character that speaks his mind is a high level story character. Any rpg where the main character never speaks and never behaves in a communicating factor is a low level story character. Carefully, and I mean carefully choose which character falls into which category.

-> Will Bubel
-> Machine wash cold, tumble dry.

wasnt the whole "complete task, get EXP" done in Valkry Profile for the PSX?

quote:Original post by Inmate2993
I think what you''d have to be careful about when making a game like this is that the players could get bored fast, so you would have to keep them interested through a number of ways, like highly complex animations and a lot of plot branches.

It seems that everyone agrees that branching is the way to go. Does is also mean a multilinear storyline (multiple endings) or a psudo-linear storyline that arrives at the same points through multiple means?

quote:
If you want to go the high level story path, all of the characters in your game should have personalities of their own, including which ever character you choose to be the main protagonist...

So, you think that the player shouldn''t be locked into which "side" of the story they see? That, although the story by large is the same for each character (the world), the details of the story depend on who you choose for that main character?

I really like this thought. I''ve had trouble writing InterLock since the story always seemed relentlessly large. This helps things by breaking up the script into five smaller interconnected stories. This also adds replay value since you won''t see everything without playing all the characters involved.

quote:...and that they''re behavior should be entirely their own, and not totally dependant on which buttons the players press.

Of course, this goes back to balance in a video game. Isn''t that more up to the particular game (script) rather than the machanics of it?

Thank you everyone, again. ^_^ I yeild discussion to the floor.

I finally told this idea to a very trusted friend of mine -- I handed him a printout of the discussion here.

After a few minutes, he rather apologetically told me that this isn''t much more than an imitation of Pen-and-Paper RPGs, although with the GM as the computer. His argument stemmed from the fact that the stat and skill system based on social interaction was somewhat boiled down from these type of non-computer games.

My goal with this idea was to create a way for someone to experience a story only in an intereactive way that did not require the story be altered [significantly] to fit the gaming aspects.

Traditional RPGs seem to me less centered on character development and moreso on battle. (I use D&D as an example). I realize that there are some pen-and-paper''s which are centered around storytelling of the kind I''m looking for, Big Eyes Small Mouth is the only one I can think of off the top of my head.

I''m concerned about just how to implement a game of the type we''ve been discussing. Should the player even know about the stats? Are skills certainly something to have? Should the player keep track of tasks, or should there be an online list?

Thanx again everyone!

What I was getting at was that most games choose to leave the characters undeveloped from the narrative sense. Character A has 4 traits that is used to govern how the character speaks during the game, but the character is locked into this and your character never grows out of it. An example of how to beat this would be the character Wakka from FF10 who starts out as a big racist, and changes throughout the game. Its probably an american trend that dictates that this characters with this eccentricity keeps it forever.

As for the branching plots, its purely a choice of your own at to where the game goes. I tend to dislike games that branch out and return to the same point by the end, some games tend to do it with the style that only the area you were at when you made the choice changes, and that the rest of the game progresses as normally. I haven''t played either, one because it isn''t out yet, but I hear that SaGa Frontier, and Suikoden3, does stuff where based on your starting character, you get to perceive the story from that character''s point of view. Sorta a Dr.Jeckle and Mr.Hyde type of thing I suppose.

-> Will Bubel
-> Machine wash cold, tumble dry.